


and now the final frame

by patrokla



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Episode: s02e10 No Mercy, Gen, Unresolved Tension, fellas is it gay to obsess over a high school karate rivalry, to the extent that 30 years down the line it ignites a war at the local high school, turning a 40 second silence into a real angstfest? it's more likely than you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27123542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: Two men enter an elevator. Two men leave.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso & Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	and now the final frame

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Love is a Losing Game" by Amy Winehouse.
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://leguin.tumblr.com/), where I'm currently having way too many thoughts and feelings about Cobra Kai.

The thing you gotta know about Johnny Lawrence is that he’s always looking for a fight. Not even necessarily (and it had taken Daniel three decades to realize this) in a malicious or bullying way. He just seems to enjoy it, the tension as he pushes people as far as they’ll go, and the adrenaline rush when they finally strike back, and he especially seems to enjoy fighting Daniel.

So when Daniel sees him in the elevator, he’s expecting some kind of infuriating, deliberately harmful remark to kick things off. He’d expect that on a normal day, let alone this day. It’s not like he hasn’t been given plenty of ammunition, not like he doesn’t have legitimate reasons to be angry at Daniel for probably the first time in his life. Daniel is angry right back at him, but he’s also pretty angry with himself. Angry isn’t even the right word - appalled would be more accurate. Horrified, shocked, ashamed. Disappointed, so deeply disappointed in himself and in the situation that he thinks he must be drawing from Mr. Miyagi’s own well of disappointment, beyond the grave. He’d let him down. He’d let Sam down. He’d let down all of his students, even Robby. Maybe especially Robby. 

He’d let down everyone who’d trusted him to guide them like Mr. Miyagi had guided him, who’d assumed that what he was doing was right. And yeah, it takes two to tango. Johnny’s got his fair share of blame here, and Cobra Kai has even more. But Daniel’s own role in it is enough to make him feel sick in his own skin, self-loathing on a level he doesn’t think he’s ever felt before in his life. He’s spent a long, long time knowing that what he was doing was good and right. He’s beginning to think that he can’t trust that instinct anymore.

When he finally steps into the elevator, carefully not looking at Johnny, he finds himself clenching his fists in preparation for whatever is coming next.

Okay, so maybe he’s hoping Johnny will behave as he always does, living by that Cobra Kai _strike first_ bullshit, and try to pick a fight - or finish the one they’d started this morning. Maybe he’d gotten into the elevator with the express purpose of letting his existence goad Johnny into hitting him, shoving him into the elevator wall, or, at the very least, bluntly insulting him. Daniel doesn't start fights, but he feels no compunction about retaliating - turnabout is fair play, he thinks, and the more he thinks about it, the more he wants it. With every second it gets easier to redirect all the anger and unease in his body into steadying breaths and the kind of focus that a fight demands. He's ready to give as good as he gets from Johnny.

He glances over at him quickly, as the doors close, and - he doesn’t see anything he was hoping to see. The combativeness, the glint in Johnny’s eyes when he wants to fight with Daniel, that completely delusional sense of victimhood…nothing. Johnny just looks up at the ceiling and then down at the floor, shoulders slumped. Avoiding any eye contact.

Daniel doesn’t trust it. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to trust it, and what he really can’t trust is himself. He gets out at the next floor as quickly as he can, like if he moves fast enough he can avoid the issue entirely. Johnny watches him go, and doesn’t say a single word.

  
—

Johnny can’t remember the last time he felt this low. Not since his mom passed, and Sid had started laying into him at her goddamn funeral as if to make it crystal clear that there was no one left on the planet who would love him like she had. There’d been more rough moments with Robby than he could count, but even the worst of those had existed alongside his idiotic belief that he would always have another shot at being a dad worthy of the occasional visit to any future grandkids. 

There’s no hope in this moment. Even if Miguel lives, and fuck, given how many wires and machines he’s hooked up to right now that feels like a pretty big if, it’s pretty clear that Carmen won’t let Johnny near him again. Johnny had gotten Miguel into karate, and then his own son, who’d gotten into karate just to spite Johnny for being a deadbeat, had kicked him over a railing and shattered his spine. There were a lot of signs there that pointed directly at Johnny being the cause of all of this, and as much as he’d like to shift that blame onto Kreese, or LaRusso, or even Robby, he knows…he knows that most of this is on him.

So yeah, he’s feeling pretty goddamn low, and the fact that he’d had a moment back there in the waiting room where he’d been willing to disown Robby in front of the whole hospital just to get Carmen to see that he was on Miguel’s side in all of this, in everything, well. He’s half-hoping the elevator will get to the first floor and then keep sinking further into the ground until it and Johnny get crisped by the heat of the Earth’s core.

And then, right before the elevator doors close, Daniel LaRusso rounds the corner, and Johnny realizes that the day can get even worse.

LaRusso’s eyes dart over to him as he slowly gets into the elevator like he’s expecting Johnny to hit him. That’s rich for a guy that kicked Johnny’s door down this morning, but Johnny gets it, sort of. But what is he supposed to do, lash out at LaRusso for the shit his own son did? No, fucking obviously not. If there’s anything to point fingers at it’s the fact that LaRusso could never leave well enough alone when it came to the way anyone else lived their life, and his own ‘defensively trained’ students were proof of that, but Johnny doesn’t have the energy to point fingers. Because if he’s being honest, yeah, he’d done a lot of shit since he’d re-opened Cobra Kai with the knowledge that LaRusso could and would overreact to it. That wasn’t why he’d done any of it, but there was no denying that it had made things a little more fun.

Fun. Jesus Christ, what a fucking mess. He almost does want to start a fight, then, just to have a minute where he doesn’t have to think about anything beyond figuring out LaRusso’s next move. Given how eagerly LaRusso had jumped into things this morning, Johnny thinks he might appreciate the distraction, too. 

Before he can actually do anything, the elevator stops and LaRusso slips out, angling his body away from Johnny to avoid the possibility of any kind of contact. He moves quick, the way people do when they’ve got a whole life to hurry back to, kids to take care of, people to hold them accountable. Johnny lost all that shit in the span of one morning, so he takes his time getting out. He needs to figure out what to do with Cobra Kai, if he has any students left, but for now - for now, he really just needs to get hammered.


End file.
